It should all be fixed now, I’ve setup a backup DNS server for CA, and Steve and I are taking steps to bulletproof the setup. The problem started with a billing issue for the old location where CA used to be hosted. They pulled the plug finally, but the DNS server went with it. Luckily I have resources at my disposal to setup a new one within minutes.

Unfortunately the “trickle through” nature of TTL (time to live) DNS entries takes awhile to get updated on ISP’s and PC’s web wide, so some may take as long as 12 hours to get refreshed with new DNS entries.

Is the IP address dynamic or is it static to the point where I/we could code it in our local “hosts” file?

Coding/entering it in the local hosts file releievs the necessity for an application to query a remote Domain Name Server but rather will use the assignments hard-coded in the hosts file. I had to do this at work recently on an XP box when some named non-routable 192 servers in our building were being incorrectly ‘resolved’ because of some malicious code …

Whew, first Dr. Timothy Ball couldn’t appear on the SciGuy’s great climate”debate”, then CA disappeared. My first thought was the AGW putsch had commenced. Hey, after reading Mayer Hillman’s comments to Local Transport Today, it’s easy to be paranoid:

“Transport policy-makers should start preparing now for a dramatic reduction in motorised travel that will be brought about by carbon rationing, one of the country’s leading environmental thinkers told LTT this week.
“Just start reading the runes because what’s going to happen is the demand for road, rail and air travel is going to start falling away just as soon as we have rationing,” says Mayer Hillman in an interview with the magazine.

Hillman, senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, says carbon rationing is the only way to ensure that the world avoids the worst effects of climate change. And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people.

“When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it,” he says. “This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.”

The outage gave me a fright in sunny Australia. I posted a short joke about Steve McI and snow, which it repeated in draft and final form, then shut me out. The joke was not all that offensive, but I thought I must have crossed an unknown boundary of decency and got blackballed (Google that word).

Frequent trips to the USA and Canadia have long ago convinced me that the Aussie sense of humour is often misunderstood in Nth America. We have fewer problems in Iceland.

For those that put into HOSTS, remember to take it back out before the next IP address change.

Yes; good advice.

The bigger trick is finding the thing (HOSTS file; it moved deeper in the file structure in XP but remains rather shallow in 98SE), then remembering to take off the suffix (the .sam means .SAMple) to make it work …

At one time I had half a dozen IPs-URLs hard-coded as a result of some DNS’s either getting faulty data, some site owners failing to renew domain names in a timely fashion THEN finding out when the bill was past due as their URL didn’t work out in the ‘world’ anymore!

Hillman needs to see a shrink. This type of statement is highly offensive and indicates mental instability or intake of some substance that I would like to avoid.

When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it, he says. This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.

As one lemming said to another, “Let’s follow George, he’s found a faster way”.

The joke was not all that offensive, but I thought I must have crossed an unknown boundary of decency and got blackballed

I was also shut out after some crass attempt at humor, and convinced the server was pointing my way, whatever “pointing” means. With all the professional writers out on strike, one must do the best one can.

CA was working for me last night when this thread started, but this morning it wasn’t working and just came back. But I went to Anthony’s site and decided to try CA from there. I don’t know if CA came back for that reason or or the DNS server just finally got word.

CA was down all day at work but tonight after 7pm Chicago time, CA was back, but I can’t be sure it’s because the home computer in Naperville on wideopenwest.com does not suffer from the same malaise as the work computer on polysystems.com. I think the same pattern was there Monday.

I can connect & post now, but had problems for a week or more. During that time I found I could connect by dropping the “www” in CA’s address, but got a strange WordPress-less text-like view & also couldn’t post. And no, I didn’t have CA listed on my HOSTS file.